For many in her hometown of Swat and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the significance of a Pashtun girl wining the Nobel is clear. To them it is an historic event from which Malala Yousafzai has emerged, perhaps somewhat incongruously, as mythical a figure as Malalai of Maiwand, the Pashtun folk hero who rallied Pashtun fighters against the British troops during the second Anglo-Afghan War.

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani Pashtun teenage women education campaigner, continues to receive honors since being attacked by the Taliban in her hometown of Swat last year. This week, Britain’s prominent contemporary portraitist Jonathan Yeo unveiled a portrait of Malala at Britain’s National Portrait Gallery. Days before that she opened a 188 million pound library in Birmingham, a city where she …

Literally missing by inches being named the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the young Pakistani girl who achieved international fame after being shot in the head and neck on a school bus in the Swat Valley by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on October 9 last year, Malala Yousufzai felt she had not yet done enough to earn …

The Nobel Peace committee has failed to read the legend of Malala Yousafzai for what it’s worth. While it would be well-nigh impossible to fully configure her potential, the nearest anyone came to immortalizing her universal avatar was a banner in Nepal that read: “Every child’s sister, every parent’s daughter”. While this may be an emotional call even if well …